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Posts tagged with 'Lewis's'

Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s SS Great Eastern was, in her day, the largest ship ever built. A truly ambitious project from one of the most famous names in engineering history, the Great Eastern was built to provide a ship that could travel all the way to Australia or the Far East without the need to stop and take on more coal. Despite this she was only used on the transatlantic routes, travelling to Canada and North America as a passenger liner, often departing from Liverpool and playing a part in the emigrant trade.

This image of the hair salon on the fifth floor is in Stephen King’s exhibition. Image (c) Stephen King.

This exhibition by Liverpool photographer Stephen King has been a real success, having received over 37,000 visitors since it opened in February.

Sadly, the store closed at the end of May, but it’s been lovely to see so many people coming to the exhibition to relive memories of the fifth floor and often uncover its hidden secrets for the first time, unaware that this closed floor ever existed. Read more…

The well-loved icon of Liverpool department stores Lewis’s, sadly closed its doors for the last time at the end of May. Prior to that for around the last 30 years the store was mainly recognised for its shopping culture, but until the early 1980s it was much more than a place where you might buy a dress or new handbag.

Before the 80s the store also offered three restaurants and what was at one time the world’s largest hair salon on the fifth floor, until it was closed to the public in the 80s and used as a storage floor ever since. Read more…

Stephen has a fascinating background in photography, having begun taking photographs when he was ten years old, and developing this passion further by using his other passion, skateboarding as the focus for his work. Read more…

People attending the opening of Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Story watch a film about the floor by Jacqueline Passmore

Having received the sad news earlier in the week that Liverpool’s oldest department store would be closing in June for redevelopment, it made the evening even more poignant knowing that one of the city’s icons would soon be gone forever.

Chatting to my mum and auntie the other day about the exhibition, confirmed how fond scousers are of the store and the memories it holds for them. Having worked in the children’s department of Lewis’s, my mum proudly recounted her own stories of the shop and the grandeur of the fifth floor as it once was, remembering the hair salon, Red Rose restaurant, and the fabulous tiled murals that have been out of public view since the early 80s. Read more…

The news of the closure adds extra poignancy to the stories told in the next exhibition to open at the National Conservation Centre, Lewis’s fifth floor: a department story. The exhibition features recent pictures by local photographer Stephen King of the faded glamour of a whole floor of Lewis’s which has not been open to the public since the 1980s. Read more…

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